Cartington goes Forth - Conclusion

   The column moves on

Without further ado, here from the Journal of Frederick Cartington is the conclusion of his latest venture into Jimland.

From the Journal of Frederick Cartington:

"Having  achieved our initial objective of finding the outlet to the river, we proceed North-Eastwards towards our second objective which surprisingly was a swamp."
"Our Scout Ebor, (unsurprisingly) failed to notice the Tribals within its confines. We soon convinced these hostiles that attacking us was foolhardy. in the extreme."

Natives to the fore and flank

They close in...slowly

Those that can move, head for safety or form a firing line

Some impressive shooting drops two natives

The natives struggle to move in the Swamp

Four guns against a slow moving target, just doesn't seem fair somehow

He's dropped, with shots to spare for his friend

It's all over, as some make a slow escape to safety and a flanking fire is formed

"We proceeded Northeast to the river and the trail towards our final objective, where we crossed the river without incident. The now familiar Drums caused no consternation and our soldiery merely laughed at the tales that Askari fled at the sound."
"We encountered some natives that we plied with trade goods to enable us to purchase three loads of food to replace the two we had found had gone bad, probably due to the conditions in the swamp".
It was probably the same Natives too that had rummaged around in our camp the next night, looking for trade goods, but they had had the last of them"
"Wandering from the jungle, three Askari asked to join our expedition and as we had sufficient food I complied with their request, thinking the extra firepower would be useful."

The column, with Askari bringing up the rear

"Our next encounter was with yet more Tribals, surprising us whilst once more, crossing a rather wide stream."
"They attacked from our front, attempting to use the cover of the jungle, but to no avail."

The small force of Natives take advantage of the cover

The natives close...

... and the column makes its usual preparations

The natives break cover and close with the expedition

With formidable firepower the result is as expected, the two remaining flee.

"After this minor action, we once more headed NE to our expedition's objective but again finding two more loads of food that had gone bad and coupled with this was a torrential rainstorm impeding any further exploration."
"With our food dwindling fast I reluctantly decided to head back to Jim's Landing which was a lucky decision, in that the very next day after the rain, the remainder of our food was ruined"
"Unfortunately our route home south was blocked by a lake, rather than another branch of the river, enforcing a slight detour"

The column and casualties

We crossed the river once more towards Jim's Landing without food and my hunting skills failed, to the detriment of Doc, Ebor two soldiers and a bearer all of whom were carried by bearers, now relieved of their loads"
"On the last day of the expedition, a soldier foolishly followed the Askari's lead and ate a plant that killed him, whilst two Askari survived this foolish attempt at sustenance".
"Finally arriving at Jim's Landing. fresh food, water and rest would soon return Doc and Ebor to our ranks"
"A personal note:"
"As I wait for the Doc and our Scout to recover I have written to my good friend Edward Burlington Bt., inviting him to lead our next expedition.  I am tiring of the responsibility of leading these very dangerous ventures into Jimland, but will of course volunteer my services as hunter."

Thus ended the last expedition where Frederick would take the lead, as the expedition had made enough cash ($378) to outfit  a new expedition and pay for a leader with a skill ! (Ned will be an Archaeologist).
It was an interesting adventure that had shown my simple river crossing rules worked imo in the style of the Jimland rules and here's the map of the expedition's exploration:

The expedition's route in red (bit obvious really)

The Natives' deployment and tactics are very stunted given that I dice for their deployment, whether or not they split their force and so on, Without an opponent I don't know how to combat this and trying to defeat myself seems futile.

Even so I have played another two adventures, featuring Ned Burlington as leader and will post these in due course.

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully you have found something of interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Cartington Goes Forth

The Explorers

Yes, this is yet another of my adventures in Jimland, played several weeks ago and took only about two to three hours playing time. I had to have an intermission halfway through playing as I realised that there were no river crossing rules in "Jimland" (probably because they played no part in the tactical games). I wished to remedy this and took a few nights thought and referred to other rules to come up with a quick and (imho) elegant solution that wouldn't slow down play.

The Soldiers

Once more the expedition was at the fully permitted strength of thirty, including twenty bearers (the maximum number allowed).
In the photograph above from left to right are Ebor (scout), Frederick (Hunter, Leader and self proclaimed hero); Dr. Albert Cleghorn (Doctor -duh!) and finally Horatio Mundella (Interpreter).

So without further ado, once more:


From the the Journal of Frederick Cartington:

The column in its entirety

"With the exceptional success  of my previous expedition, despite some losses, I was able to to gather enough resources to fully equip a new expedition"
"Doctor Albert Cleghorn, Ebor a Scout of unknown origin, Horatio Mundella acting as Interpreter, myself and six soldiers joined me in my latest escapade."

The plan with its three objectives

"The plan was to explore both unknown  branches of the river we had discovered in a previous expedition, the soldiers and myself keeping safe our valuable newcomers. In addition I would take along eight loads of trade goods to pacify any unco-operative natives and we would supplement our food supply by purchasing food at any friendly villages we encountered, thus we only set off with 12 days' worth of food, but with money aplenty to purchase more"

The column prior to spotting the ambush

"Travelling SW on a very familiar route we once more encountered some slavers, that surprised our fellows, but we saw them off with only a single soldier wounded in the process. Luckily, I guess, we had one load of bad food and ate through another to furnish the requisite unemployed bearers necessary to carry our wounded comrade (kept alive by the prompt action of our MD."

Slavers attacking the flanks of the un-surprised column

Their riflemen head for cover

Doc and Frederick head for cover...

...whilst the soldiers drop a slaver...

and the Doc and Frederick flanks the melee armed slavers

The slavers' shooting attract a water buffalo

...that immediately attack them, savaging one!

The carnage continues as Frederic bags another slaver.

Our shooting attracts a lioness and the buffalo turn its attention on us.

The lioness attacks the slavers, eager to flee, whilst the buffalo is wounded

The buffalo is dispatched but wounds a soldier

The lioness flees after a quick slaver snack

"With the demise of the beasts and what was left of the slavers we proceeded onwards towards the river along our previously forged track, losing a careless bearer, carrying a valuable load of trade goods, to one of the deadly native traps we encounter so frequently. A village is encountered and the inhabitants are more than pleased to accept our presence and two trade goods to make up for the ineptitude of our interpreter, he may speak like a native,  just not  native of Jimland it seems."
"We pick up the track of the river encountering some pygmies who are more than content to leave us alone with the help of a single load of trade goods."

The depleted column

"Eventually we found the outlet of the river to the sea, having endured bad water (causing two soldiers to fall foul of bad water), using up two more loads of trade gifts to pacify another village, excessive heat, (from which I was nearly overcome) and losing a soldier to its effects,( which the doc was unable to do anything about it). "
"Having found the mouth of the river we headed Northeast towards the unknown area that intrigued me"
 "An encounter with another  friendly village (despite our interpreter best efforts to insult them), enabled us to buy three loads of food"

Four Natives to the expedition's front and three to its flank

"With three able soldiers,  four explorers, a casualty and about 11 days of rations, I determined to carry on toward the mystery blank space in our map, of course nothing is simple as we waded into the swamp that it was and were immediately ambushed by seven spear-armed tribal warriors"

The natives immediately close, avoiding the sticky swamp mud

Those that can make for safety, or form a firing line

The bigger view

Opening fire,  Frederick and Ebor each bag a native.

The natives try to free themselves from the effects of the swamp, but...

...three out of the five remaining are stuck however.

With the loss of another Native into the swamp depths, they flee!

"With the action brief, but thankfully only deadly to the Natives we made camp in the swamp, ate a good supper and I planned for the next week"

 My plans (rather than Frederick's) was to protect the four explorers as much as the dice and event cards would allow me, to enable them to progress. Horatio, the interpreter has only a hand to hand weapon and a large save roll, whilst Ebor the Hunter  and the Doc are a little more average, with fairly good save rolls (14 and 16  respectively ) but poor  shooting (5,4) and melee skills (4,3).
Following a river gleans a lot of points (cash) and I need 100 to increase a single skill point for an explorer, so I was looking for 400+ points in this adventure!

Next week will see the conclusion of this adventure and if you've read through this far, I hope you've found something of interest (did you notice the bits of plastic scatter in the swamp ?)

That's it then until next week and as always you comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

"We want...... a shrubbery"

So as I've managed less than two

    To appease the knight who say "Ni,", the makings  of a shrubbery

hours' painting this last week (- usual excuses, lethargy, the weather, surgery etc.) and I also  haven't finished the fairly arduous (imo) task of writing up my last Jimland adventure, here's some more things that I managed to do in April.
In my last, as yet unpublished, foray  into Jimland I used some of my plastic jungle bits and pieces to mark out the playing area.

Photo courtesy of Frederick Cartington's latest expedition

In addition to the"shrubs" marking the limits of the playing area I added a few more for I added a few more to pad out the terrain , which is fairly sparse imo for both jungle and especially in the grasslands.
These can be seen in the photograph to the left, looking particularly plasticky.

First few attempts.

I decided that I really needed to make some, in part to represent  outcrops of scrub  that will be merely dressing for the game and won't provide cover or be obstacles to movement.
I gathered the various materials that I would need to make my version of the very popular tufts (I've always thought it a strange fixation wargamers seem to have for them).





The things I used can be seen in the top photograph :

'Finished' scrub land with Masked natives for scale.

A Poundlandworldbuy paste brush (disassembled and sans handle), originally bought to use as an experiment in thatching; some 20mm washers that I buy by weight and use for my zombie games; some coarse string that I've used for grass for what seems like forever and various bits of grassland plastic bits left over from my jungle making exploits. Together with my newly acquired Xmas-pressie glue gun I went work on these.
The process was fairly simply, great glob of hot glue (my fingers will attest that it is hot!) on the washer, stick some grass-like bits from the paste brush or plastic bits into it  and wait until it sets.
I used a roll of grease-proof paper to work on, in the hope I could peel the glued bases off afterwards (worked a treat). Next step was to add filler and paint the bases where the glue was a dark brown/black (burnt umbra) a dry brush of green on the base with a sprinkling of sand over PVA glue finished the bases off. The various paste brush bits were painted with a watered-down acrylic in various hues of green.

Another view of  the scrub, covering an area about 2 foot by 2 foot

The plastic bits have yet to be done but are fairly usable as they are. I did find the bristles of the paste brush to be about twice the length of I wanted, so I cut them in half, after the glue had set in the first piece and used the 'stub' for a second one. Trimming the scrub afterwards gave some suitable (imo) looking scrub.
It wasn't a difficult task (but a bit tedious and boring), so much so it took only about an hour to complete about 80 pieces as I found I could glue gun about 5 at a time.

It only took about another hour or so to completed them after the filler had gone on and had dried.

Yet another view of my scrub-land (boring huh?)

A Lidl mat, cut vaguely in half (obligatory very boring picture)

In my latest adventure into Jimland, my expedition and are having seemingly endless encounters with streams. I did like the idea I had of the variable width stream, but I did make the banks to steep and consequently l've had many problems standing figures on them. To remedy this I'm going to abandon the terrain board I've been using and look instead to using the mats from Lidl/Aldi for my adventures in Jimland.
I've cut one mat in two, giving a roughly 39" square; Jimland requires a a 30" square playing area, so my 39" square will allow a native set-up area rather than being 'off-table' at the start of each encounter.

The new river/stream 'board' (still fairly boring).

The second half of the mat was has a cut made from 15" in on opposite sides to get a stream effect, that won't have figures falling all over themselves!
An as it will fit on the bard length-wise, it will also follow the flow of the plastic sheet 'sea; that I use underneath (Clint).

LOOK !  A very thin boring stream!

So that's it from me this week, I'll get back to writing up the latest expedition into Jimland, as i really want another game and don't wan a back-log of adventures to have to write -up.

So that's it from me for another week, I've padded this post out as much as I could in the hope that you'll find something of interest amongst the boring bits.

As always your comments, questions, queries, bouquets and brickbats are always welcomed and appreciated.